Thursday, June 30, 2016

The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) has received the final prototype of a 29 tonne tracked armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) which is intended to replace the army's ageing M113A2 Ultra armoured personnel carrier (APC) fleet, Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen announced during his annual press conference for SAF Day which falls on 1 July.
The yet unnamed vehicle - currently designated the New Generation AFV - has been under development by the country's Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) in partnership with Singapore Technologies (ST) since 2006 and is expected to be commissioned into the army's armoured corps by 2019 to operate alongside the in-service ST Kinetics Bionix and Bionix II tracked infantry fighting vehicles.

This is interesting. This vehicle has been in development since 2006 and no one knew about it? Wow. I'm not a fan of the "neck down" philosophy but Singapore operates a wide variety of vehicles that all do the same job. That seems really impractical for a nation that prides itself not only on its tech and practicality but also on being frugal. For a city state I wonder how they can justify so many different armored vehicles? Is this for domestic consumption or is it aimed at the foreign market?

UPDATE!

Mike Yeo delivered the goods for us. First, the reasoning behind this new tracked vehicle is that the Bionix 2 just doesn't have the growth potential needed to meet the Singapore Army's needs going forward. We're talking about increased firepower, armor, anti-tank missile carriage, networking etc...The next question is why aren't they considering the excellent Terrex 3 for this role? Mike is thinking that its tracked vehicles for armored formations and wheels for mech infantry...classic armor philosophy. Now for the best part. A sneak peek below.